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University of B.C. auditors have uncovered possible financial irregularities involving the management of a $3-million-a-year dentistry program, and the matter has now been referred to the RCMP.

The program, General Practice Residency (GPR), gives extra experience to dental graduates in clinics mainly in British Columbia, and its annual funding of $3 million comes mostly from the provincial government.

The university would not say exactly how much money may have been jeopardized.

“UBC has indications that there could be impropriety, and that could be anything from misuse or unapproved use of funds right up until fraud, but that is something that will have to be determined by police,” said spokeswoman Lucie McNeill. “Our understanding is that the RCMP is investigating.”

No criminal charges have been laid, she said.

The UBC investigation prompted a parallel probe at Vancouver General Hospital. “We are aware of a UBC investigation. We have conducted an internal investigation,” said Vancouver Coastal Health spokeswoman Anna Marie D’Angelo.

Last summer, a whistleblower alerted senior UBC administrators about potential monetary improprieties in the GPR program, and the university’s internal auditors investigated. The university confirmed possible irregularities in the fall, McNeill said, and took steps to ensure the services being delivered to patients would continue.

“Once we had it confirmed by internal audit that there could indeed be a problem, we actually took steps to secure the funds and made administrative changes to the program to make sure that the funds were no longer at risk,” she added.

McNeill said it was a complex investigation involving several funders and locations. Up to 11 dental graduates, mainly from outside B.C., are placed in various clinics to gain extra experience each year through the GPR program, including at the First United Church clinic in the Downtown Eastside, the B.C. Cancer Agency, and a UBC-affiliated hospital clinic in Vietnam.

UBC notified the RCMP in February and will soon give its completed internal probe to the Mounties.

The RCMP’s federal criminal operations unit did not return messages left by The Sun Wednesday.

The university has stung by financial impropriety in the recent past.

In January 2012, a former UBC financial manager was sentenced to two years of house arrest for stealing $460,000 from a university medical department.

And later that same year, it was discovered another former UBC medical school employee accepted almost twice the pay she was owed, receiving more than $600,000 to which she wasn’t entitled.

“Financial impropriety is absolutely unacceptable,” McNeill said. “We take that very seriously and when we were notified (about this most recent set of allegations), we took action.”

Investigation of UBC dentistry program’s financials turned over to RCMP

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